Why Building a Life You Love is Only Half The Goal

What does building a life you love actually look like? I mean, really? It's become one of those phrases we throw around all willy-nilly but never actually dive into... like "She believed she could, so she did" and "No Parking".

I think deep down we all think there will be a point where we'll just know that we're done. We've finally built the life we love and we're here, this is it. We've arrived and can just live here forever, all happy and done building. But if you listen to people who are farther down the path you start to realize that for the most part no one actually has any idea what they're doing or if they've arrived anywhere. We're all just doing the best we can and trying to make the next right choice.

A few months ago I had a realization. I was working later than usual on a deadline, so it was about 9pm and I was sitting in my office doing the tedious task of running preflight on a magazine layout. I had the magazine up on the big monitor and decided to watch Grace and Frankie on Netflix on the laptop (Love that show! Guess which one I plan on becoming...). Bean the cat was asleep on the futon folded against the wall behind me like a hippie meditation couch, and there were leftover pizza remnants on the desk beside me.

Anyway, all of a sudden in the middle of this messy, mundane, normal scene, I realized I'm doing exactly what I'm meant to be doing right now. I love my life.

Granted, my life is pretty great. I have a roof over my head and food in my refrigerator, amongst all the other things I have to be grateful for. And I very much am grateful. But it's definitely not my dream life yet, or even where I imagined myself at this point.

Eventually I want to own a home, hopefully have a family, grow my business to a point where a lot of my income is passive so I can travel more, possibly buy a small goat, all the things most of us want. But right now, right where I'm at, I'm happy. I created this. Not all on my own, because none of us create our lives without the influence of others, but the choices that built this life were my own.

Sometimes it doesn't feel like you have choices, you feel like parts of your story have been forced on you and you have to passively go along with a life you didn't choose. But you always have a choice. Sometimes that choice is as simple as "I will find a way to love the life I'm living right now, or I will find a way to change it".

Working towards building that goal life is a seriously great thing (and something a lot of people never even attempt, so go you!). But it's just as important, or maybe even more so, to find a way to love the life you're living right now. If you can't find a way to be in love with your life today, will the things you're working towards really make you happy?